You can still take Public Health courses during Intersession this winter! See below for this year’s Intersession courses:

• AS.280.233: Cancer Related Health Behaviors and Disparities
  • This course will explore behaviors related to cancer prevention and control. Students will gain a basic understanding of cancer etiology and descriptive epidemiology. Additional topics will include primary and secondary cancer prevention strategies, drawing from recent research, including studies currently being conducted at the National Cancer Institute. Students will also learn about disparities in cancer prevention behaviors. Multiple learning formats will promote student learning and introduce different tools for behavioral cancer prevention research.
• AS.280.247: B’More: Public Health and Systems in Baltimore
  • This course will allow students the opportunity to define democracy through a public health lens. Students will engage in a week-long opportunity to learn more about the diverse and robust stories of the Baltimore community, while exploring their own social value of grassroots or community development work. This course is open to Freshmen only.
• AS.280.248: Accidental Careers: Preparing for Applied Work in Injury Prevention
  • The goals of this course are to introduce students to the field of injury control and its major foundations and acquaint them with the priority injury areas of the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy (the Center), housed in the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Students will explore resources, training opportunities, and agencies and organizations important to injury prevention practitioners and researchers, and learn about the career opportunities in the field. The course prepares PHS students to undertake Independent Academic Work or complete the required Applied Experience with Center faculty by introducing students to a wide variety of ongoing injury-related projects, including both research and practice oriented work.
• AS.280.251: Promoting your Well-being: Holistic Practices and Mindfulness
  • This course is primarily experiential in nature, with mindfulness, mediation and somatic practices being offered in each class meeting. We will discuss the common struggles students face during their time at college and explore the potential that mindfulness practices have as therapeutic modalities. The primary evidence-based program that we will offer is the Koru Mindfulness program, designed specifically for emerging adults. Students will have access to the Koru app, which allows the course instructors (all Koru-trained teachers) to support mindfulness practices that happen outside of class meetings. We will also discuss how to incorporate mindfulness and other practices to promote your well-being. Dimensions of well-being we will explore include physical, emotional/mental, and social well-being. Students will be asked to reflect on class experiences and discussions and be required to submit their reflections after each class.
• AS.280.252: Public Health, Prose + Purpose: The Role of Story Telling & Care in Public Health Fields
  • Physician-poet Rafael Campo describes two purposes that poetry serves for him: it acts as a “factory for empathy” to listen and reflect the stories of his patients through creative expression, and it also serves to heal what he describes as “a kind of wound” that comes from being a health professional who experiences the emotional toll alongside his patients. He is one of many health professionals, dating back to 19th century poets such as John Keats, who uses the art of writing as a method of storytelling as well as a personal practice of processing thoughts and emotions. Digital communities of health professionals and creative writers share, publish, and support each other’s work through connection and dialogues, another way that the solitary act of writing transforms into community-building. Furthermore, as the health communications field grows, creative writing can be employed to reach audiences that otherwise go uncaptured by disconnected stories. In the past 18 months, as public health and healthcare professionals have acutely experienced the tragedy and trauma of the pandemic, the future professionals who step into these fields can be well-served through cultivating a writing practice, whether it is personal or professional. This course will expose students to a variety of interdisciplinary health creative writers, engage in meaningful community exercises around creative writing, and adapt and personalize a mindset for writing about their public health experiences that is authentic to their voice and experience while honoring the work and community who inspired it.
• AS.280.253: The Pediatric Emergency Department: Public Health in Action
  • The goal of this course is to introduce students to the pediatric emergency department and the opportunities to improve health outcomes and implement public health interventions in this setting. The course will also prepare PHS students to undertake their required Applied Experience in the Johns Hopkins Pediatric Emergency Department. Course will take place at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Children’s Center.
• AS.280.254: Co-Governance for Public Space: Sharing Power While Ensuring Public Value
  • This course explores the skills and capabilities local governments need to develop parks, public libraries and other public spaces with local communities, business and philanthropies in a way that ensures equity and public value. Led by Bloomberg Public Innovation Fellow Tommi Laitio who acted as the first Executive Director for Culture and Leisure in one of the most livable cities in the world, Helsinki (Finland), this class will identify through case studies how partnerships can improve the quality of public spending and build local pride.
• AS.280.255: Trust as Civic Infrastructure: Designing for Trust in City Governance
  • Using real-world cases, discussions, and readings, this course explores how teams and organizations charged with managing public projects can incorporate stakeholder input to foster and rebuild trust despite a legacy of distrust and low morale. Led by the former Director of Innovation for Mobile, AL and current Bloomberg Public Innovation Fellow at Hopkins, we will examine how novel digital and data uses and communication flows can improve trust in the public sector, both internally and among communities.